Teaching for Wisdom

Robert J. Sternberg, Tufts University

Send correspondence to:
Robert J. Sternberg
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
Tufts University
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1/24/10
robert.sternberg@tufts.edu

Note: I am grateful to Elena Grigorenko, Linda Jarvin, Jennifer Jordan, Tzur Karelitz, Jill Pousty, and Alina Reznitskaya for the collaborations that made this work possible.

Teaching for Wisdom


In October of 2008, the world entered into a recession unequaled since the Great Depression of 1929. Many people, including economists, thought that such a recession was no longer even possible. What made the recession particularly odd is that it came after, not before, investment banking started attracting the best and the brightest among the graduates of the top universities in the world. Bankers had created dizzyingly complex mathematical formulas that had brought them enormous profits and that seemed to have no downside. The top investment banks, at least in the United States, only recruited in the top universities in the country. In this way, they hoped to ensure the growth but at the same time the security of the world’s financial system. How could such smart people have created so much misery for so many people? Even more curiously, how could these smart people have then tried to profit from the misery they created, so ignorant of its repercussions that the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, referred to the company as doing “God’s work.” This was the same company that later was revealed to be betting its own funds against the funds of clients who paid Goldman Sachs for financial advice. This unbridled arrogance—on the part of bankers, politicians, and others—is probably what led to the loss in January, 2010, by the US Democratic Party, of the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy. Scott Brown, a formerly practically unknown state senator, won the election. The state of Massachusetts had not elected a Republican senator since 1972. The question, which also forms the title of a book, is one of “Why smart people can be so stupid” (Sternberg, 2002).
I will argue in this chapter that smart people can be so stupid, or to be exact, foolish, because they are unwise. Having intelligence is not tantamount to being wise. People in particular and the world in general will experience greater happiness when schools place more emphasis upon the acquisition of wisdom, and not just upon the accumulation of knowledge.
What is Wisdom?
Wisdom has many definitions, none of which are entirely agreed on by laypersons or scholars alike. It has been noted as the ability to make proper judgments, a wealth of philosophic or scientific learning, the possession of insight, the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships, and good sense. How do these general definitions relate to more developed theoretical models of wisdom?
Historically, the concept of wisdom has been the object of philosophical as well as psychological inquiries (Birren & Svensson, 2005; Osbeck & Robinson, 2005; Robinson, 1990; Staudinger, 2008) since the Platonic dialogues in The Republic. More recently, with the emergence of psychology as a field of study separate from philosophy, the concept of wisdom has also been studied as a psychological construct, and a number of psychologists have attempted empirical investigation of the concept of wisdom and its manifestations (see reviews in Karelitz, Jarvin, & Sternberg, in press; Staudinger, 2008; Sternberg, 1990, 2008; Sternberg & Jordan, 2005). Wisdom has been studied from a range of psychological perspectives (a summary of the major approaches to understanding wisdom, and references for further reading, can be found in Sternberg, 2001; Sternberg & Jordan, 2005). Some researchers (see Clayton 1975, 1982; Holliday & Chandler, 1986; or Sternberg, 1990) have focused on implicit theories of wisdom, that is, on trying to understand how the layperson perceives and defines wisdom (Bluck & Glueck, 2005). Other researchers have adopted a developmental perspective to investigate how wisdom develops or fails to develop. Most noticeably, empirical work in this area has been conducted by Paul Baltes and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute (Baltes & Smith, 2008; Baltes & Staudinger, 1993, 2000; Kunzmann & Baltes, 2005; Smith & Baltes, 1990). Another developmental approach to defining wisdom is to view it as postformal–operational thinking, extending beyond the traditional Piagetian stages of intelligence (Piaget, 1972).
Several researchers and theoreticians have focused on the importance of integration and balance in wisdom. Labouvie-Vief (1990), for example, has emphasized the balance between different kinds of thinking, suggesting that wisdom constitutes a balance of logos, which are objective and logical processes, and mythos, which represent subjective and organismic processes. Kramer (1990, 2000) has focused on the balance between various self-systems such as the cognitive, conative, and affective, arguing that wisdom involves integration of cognition and affect, resulting in a well-balanced personality, where the conscious and unconscious interact in harmony. Still others insist on the balance between different points of view (Kitchener & Brenner, 1990), or on “a balance between the opposing valences of intense emotion and detachment, action and inaction, knowledge and doubts” (Birren & Fisher, 1990, p.326). This essay will focus on a theory of wisdom first proposed by Sternberg (1998), which builds on previous theories emphasizing the importance of integration and balance in wisdom.
The Balance Theory of Wisdom
Sternberg defines wisdom as the use of one’s intelligence, creativity, and knowledge and as mediated by positive ethical values toward the achievement of a common good through a balance among (a) intrapersonal, (b) interpersonal, and (c) extrapersonal interests, over the (a) short and (b) long terms (Sternberg, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2009).
Let us examine the different components of this definition one by one.
First, wise decisions do not just require intelligence and explicit knowledge, they typically draw on or tacit, or implicit, knowledge gained through experience as well. The term tacit knowledge was first introduced by Polanyi (1966) and describes knowledge that is (a) implicit, or acquired without instructional support or even conscious awareness, (b) procedural, or “knowing how” rather than “knowing what,” and (c) instrumental to obtaining a particular goal (Sternberg et al., 2000). Tacit knowledge allows people to appreciate the nuances of a given situation that are not obtainable from any formalized, or even verbalized, set of rules. Tacit knowledge is not a substitute for other types of knowledge, such as declarative or explicit procedural knowledge. Rather, tacit knowledge helps to inform wise decision making in combination with other types of explicit knowledge. It provides the advantage to a seasoned diplomat over a freshman student in political science.
Second, the definition draws heavily on the idea of balance: the balance among multiple interests, immediate and lasting consequences, and environmental responses. What are these different interests and responses? Intrapersonal interests affect only the individual. They have to do with one’s own sense of identity and may include such things as the desire for self-actualization, popularity, prestige, power, prosperity, or pleasure. Interpersonal interests involve other people. They relate not only to one’s sense of self but also to desirable relationships with others. Extrapersonal interests are those that affect a wider organization, community, country, or environment. In addition to multiple interests, the consequences of each decision are assessed in order to balance short- and long-term objectives.
Importantly, the balance in Sternberg’s theory of wisdom does not mean that each interest, consequence, or response is weighted equally. The relative “weightings” are determined by the extent to which a particular alternative contributes to the achievement of a common good.
Choosing the right balance depends on one’s system of ethical values. In fact, positive ethical values can, or at least should, lie at the core of wise decision making, and not only in the balance theory described here. According to Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1990, pg. 32), “wisdom becomes the best guide for what is the summum bonum, or ‘supreme good.’” (see also Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2005). Pascual-Leone (1990) also considers “moral feelings and ethical evaluations (right–wrong or bad–good judgments) of motives and possible acts (e.g., morality)” as an important component of wisdom (p. 267; see Sternberg & Stemler, 2004). In Sternberg’s theory, positive ethical values not only establish what constitutes the common good, they also influence the relative weightings of the various interests, conflicting consequences, and alternative responses to environment.
The central place of positive ethical values in Sternberg’s theory brings up the question of who determines what the “right” positive ethical values are. We know that people’s ethical values differ in different cultures and at different points in history. In fact, our own democratic values dictate that we respect others’ differences in deciding what is right or wrong. But certain ethical values seem to transcend cultures and the world’s great ethical systems, such as honesty, reciprocity, fairness, and justice.
When faced with a problem, wise individuals rely on their ethical values and knowledge to help them find a solution that balances conflicting intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal interests over short and long terms. This conceptual model of wisdom, however, is not merely an esoteric intellectual exercise. Rather, it is oriented toward action. Applying relevant ethical values and knowledge, together with considering multiple interests and consequences, must lead to choosing a particular behavior (Reznitskaya & Sternberg, 2004; Sternberg, Jarvin, & Reznitskaya, 2008; Sternberg, Reznitskaya, & Jarvin, 2007). Although the balance theory of wisdom cannot determine a wise answer to any problem, it can help to assess how well a particular solution meets the theory specifications in a given context.
It could be rightly argued that formulating a wise solution to a problem may not necessarily lead to actually acting on it (Paris, 2001). Perkins (2002) describes several strategies for confronting behaviors that one considers unwise, but nevertheless finds too irresistible to abandon. For example, behaviors such as impulsiveness, procrastination, indulgence, or indecisiveness can be diminished and even eliminated with the use of deliberate conditioning and self-management techniques (Perkins, 2002).
Considering the complexity of the theoretical framework, and the possible obstacles to finding wise solutions and acting wisely, can and should schools teach in a manner to increase wise thinking in their students?
Should We Teach for Wisdom?
Teaching for wisdom not only enhances students’ thinking skills—their ability to reason reflectively, dialogically and dialectically—it also helps educators to develop more integrated curriculum units. Integrated units are beneficial because they help students see the bigger picture and understand how literature is related to history, how science and scientific discoveries and facts are embedded in a specific time and place (history), how social science and social-policy relates to history and geography, how economics are influenced by philosophical and political beliefs as well as by climate and geography, or how foreign language is inseparable from culture. Even within disciplines, far more integration is needed for students to acquire a complete and complex understanding of a topic.
Why should schools include instruction in wise-thinking skills in their curriculum? Consider four reasons.
First, knowledge is insufficient for wisdom and certainly does not guarantee satisfaction or happiness. Wisdom seems a better vehicle to the attainment of these goals. Second, wisdom provides a mindful and considered way to enter thoughtful and deliberative values into important judgments. One cannot be wise and at the same time impulsive or mindless in one’s judgments. Third, wisdom represents an avenue to creating a better, more harmonious world. Dictators such as Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin may have been knowledgeable and may even have been good critical thinkers, at least with regard to the maintenance of their own power. Given the definition of wisdom, however, it would be hard to argue they were wise. Fourth and finally, students—who later will become parents and leaders—are always part of a greater community and hence will benefit from learning to judge rightly, soundly, or justly on behalf of their community.
We especially should teach for wisdom because smart people are especially susceptible to foolishness, that is, lack of wisdom. Foolish behavior, I suggest, is due largely, although certainly not exclusively, to six fallacies in thinking. These fallacies resemble those we might associate with adolescent thinking, because they are the kind of thinking often seen in adolescents (Sternberg, 2005).
1. The unrealistic optimism fallacy. This fallacy occurs when one believes one is so smart or powerful that it is pointless to worry about the outcomes, and especially the long-term ones, of what one does because everything will come out all right in the end—there is nothing to worry about, given one’s brains or power. If one simply acts, the outcome will be fine. Bill Clinton tended to repeat sexual behavior that, first as Governor and then as President, was likely to come to a bad end. He seemed not to worry about it.
2. The egocentrism fallacy. This fallacy arises when one comes to think that one’s own interests are the only ones that are important. One starts to ignore one’s responsibilities to other people or to institutions. Sometimes, people in positions of responsibility may start off with good intentions, but then become corrupted by the power they yield and their seeming unaccountability to others for it. John Edwards, for example, seemed to let egocentrism get the better of him when he ran for president at the same time he was having an extramarital affair from which he fathered a child out of wedlock.
3. The omniscience fallacy. This fallacy results from having available at one’s disposal essentially any knowledge one might want that, is, in fact, knowable. With a phone call, a powerful leader can have almost any kind of knowledge made available to him or her. At the same time, people look up to the powerful leader as extremely knowledgeable or even close to all-knowing. The powerful leader may then come to believe that he or she really is all-knowing. So may his or her staff.
4. The omnipotence fallacy. This fallacy results from the extreme power one wields, or believes one wields. The result is overextension, and often, abuse of power. Sometimes, leaders create internal or external enemies in order to demand more power for themselves to deal with the supposed enemies. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has turned one group against another, with the apparent goal of greatly expanding and maintaining his own power.
5. The invulnerability fallacy. This fallacy derives from the presence of the illusion of complete protection, such as might be provided by a large staff. People and especially leaders may seem to have many friends ready to protect them at a moment’s notice. The leaders may shield themselves from individuals who are anything less than sycophantic. The Republican win in Massachusetts in 2010, mentioned earlier, showed Democrats they were not invulnerable at the polls, despite the decisive win in 2008.
6. The ethical-disengagement fallacy. This fallacy occurs when one starts to believe that ethics are important for other people but not for oneself. Many leaders of countries and corporations alike have seemed to think themselves exempt from the ethical standards to which they hold others. Kim Jong Il of North Korea comes to mind.
How Can We Teach for Wisdom?
Western education in the past couple of centuries has typically focused on imparting content knowledge and developing cognitive skills in students. Schools promote intelligent—but not necessarily wise—students. These students may have admirable records in school, yet make poor judgments in their own lives and in the lives of others. An important goal of educators, I believe, is to help prepare students to lead happy, satisfying, and productive lives. An increasing number of both researchers and policy makers share this belief that schools must foster both the cognitive and the moral development of their students (Reznitskaya & Sternberg, 2004). Leading a successful life inevitably involves the ability to solve difficult and uncertain everyday life problems. The problems people are exposed to vary depending on their environment and the responsibilities they carry, but all people will at one point or another be exposed to situations in which they have to rely on wisdom to make the right decision. We therefore believe that school should help enhance these wise thinking skills in students. How can teachers help their students develop all the explicit and implicit insights requisite for the display of wisdom?
The goal of teaching for wisdom can be achieved by providing students with educational contexts where students can formulate their own understanding of what constitutes wise thinking. In other words, teaching for wisdom is not accomplished through a didactic method of “imparting” information about wisdom and subsequently assessing students with multiple-choice questions. Instead, students need to actively experience various cognitive and affective processes that underlie wise decision making. In other words, teachers can provide scaffolding for the development of wisdom and case studies to help students develop wisdom, but a teacher cannot teach particular courses of actions, or give students a list of do’s and don’ts , regardless of circumstances.
What are the processes underlying wise thinking that students have to acquire, and how can they be introduced into the classroom? Sternberg (2001) outlined 16 pedagogical principles and 6 procedures derived from the theory of wisdom, described in Figures 1 and 2. The fundamental idea behind all these educational guidelines is that the instructor teaches children not what to think, but, rather, how to think.
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Insert Figures 1 & 2 about here
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Procedures for Teaching for Wisdom
Consider six procedures for teaching for wisdom (see also Figure 2).
Procedure 1: Whenever possible, encourage students to engage in reflective thinking, to reflect on their own functioning to increase their metacognition (Flavell, 1987), that is, their awareness of their cognitions, emotions, and beliefs. The process of making a wise decision is strategic and goal-oriented, and therefore requires an ongoing monitoring of selected strategies, as well as an ability to modify less successful strategies to better fit the situational demands. Teachers can help students to practice reflective thinking by designing instructional activities that allow students to explore and shape their own ethical values. Also, students can be explicitly instructed in useful metacognitive strategies such as self-questioning or the use of self-monitoring checklists. Wisdom also helps in cultivating the habit of recognizing the influence of one's immediate emotions, desires, preferences or biases on one's judgments or reactions.
Procedure 2: Engage students in class discussions, projects, and essays that encourage them to discuss the lessons they have learned from the literary and philosophical works they’ve read, and how these lessons can be applied to their own lives and the lives of others. A history curriculum, for example, should make salient the relationships between history and personally relevant everyday experiences.
Teachers should engage students in dialogical and dialectical thinking, in addition to the reflective thinking described earlier. What is dialogical thinking (principle 12)? When one is faced with a complex problem involving several points of view, it is often necessary to take into account different frames of reference and various perspectives to find the best possible solution. What may at first appear as the right answer may turn out to be the wrong choice when the long term is considered, or when the interests of the community as a whole are taken into account. In dialogical thinking, one uses multiple frames of reference to generate and deliberate about various perspectives on the issue at hand (Kuhn, Shaw, & Felton, 1997; Reznitskaya et al., 2001).
What is dialectical thinking (principle 11)? Whereas dialogical thinking involves the consideration and weighing of multiple points of view, dialectical thinking emphasizes the consideration and integration of two opposing perspectives. The first perspective considered is the thesis. For example, one can be a radical pacifist and opposed to any military presence or intervention, whatever the circumstances. A second perspective, an antithesis (a negation of the original statement) is then considered. For example, one can argue that a people can only live freely and in peace if their borders are protected by armed forces. Finally, a synthesis or reconciliation of the two seemingly opposing statements is developed. For example, one might decide that borders under dispute should be protected by a third party, such as an international army, rather than having the opposing countries measure their military strength against each other. The process does not stop when the two opposing view are reconciled; on the contrary, each synthesis becomes a new thesis, which can then be integrated in a new round of dialectical thinking. In the classroom, dialectical thinking can be encouraged through opportunities to study different sources, enabling students to build their own knowledge, or through writing assignments that explicitly call for a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Empirical studies have investigated the impact of developing such a fluid and dynamic concept of knowledge, where the source of knowledge is not the “authority” (the teacher or the book), but rather, the student. Such conceptions of knowledge have been shown to relate to active engagement in learning (e.g., McDevitt, 1990), persistence in performing a task (e.g., Dweck & Leggett, 1988), and deeper comprehension and integration of the material taught (e.g., Qian & Alvermann, 2000; Songer & Linn, 1991).
Procedure 3: Encourage students to study not only “truth,” but ethical values, as developed during their reflective thinking. The problems of major corporate fiascos such as Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and more recently, a series of failed banks beginning with Bear-Stearns and continuing through Lehman Brothers and other major banks, began with the rejection of positive ethical values.
Procedure 4: Place an increased emphasis on critical, creative, and practical thinking in the service of good ends that benefit the common good. In the typical classroom, teachers encourage critical thinking skills in their students. Some teachers also aim to develop creative and practical thinking skills (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2007; Sternberg, Jarvin, & Grigorenko, 2009) by engaging students in activities that lead them to go beyond the content they have studied (creative thinking) to apply this knowledge to their environment (practical thinking). To enhance wise thinking, however, students should also be encouraged to consider the outcome of their thinking, and to keep in mind that the best solution is not the one that benefits only the individual doing the thinking, but rather the one that helps others as well. The common good should be the guiding principle in choosing between different possible solutions.
Procedure 5: Encourage students to think about how almost any topic they study might be used for better or worse ends, and about how important that final end is. As described under Procedure 4, students should be encouraged to seek different solutions and to choose the one that benefits the common good rather than the individual. They should also be brought to realize that, just as there are different solutions benefiting different people, a given concept or point of knowledge can be used to a good or poor end. A stereotypical example is that the knowledge of nuclear physics can be applied to constructing bombs or to develop sources of energy. The end to which one chooses to apply one’s knowledge matters greatly.
Procedure 6: Remember that a teacher is a role model! To role model wisdom, the teacher adopts a Socratic approach to teaching, and invites students to play a more active role in constructing learning—from their own point of view and from that of others. Wise thinking is not a set of rules or decisions that the teacher can outline for students to copy down; it is a type of thinking that the students themselves need to adopt and master. The most effective way to encourage wise thinking skills is not through memory drills but through student participation and teacher modeling. For example, a teacher can capitalize on a negative event, such as two students getting into a fight, as a way to demonstrate how one can approach a similar situation in a more constructive way. The teacher can model wise thinking by saying: “When I get into the situations like this, I try to see the dispute from the perspective of the other person and think about whether my own behavior contributed to the situation. Was there anything I could have done differently to prevent this confrontation? Is there a solution to our disagreement that is acceptable to both of us?” Also, teachers should not miss the opportunity to recognize and praise good judgments made by students, such as when they show consideration for others and their ideas, or when they offer a solution that benefits the class as a whole rather than themselves as individuals.
Applications of the Procedures
In science teaching, dialectical thinking can be applied to illustrate to students the notion that scientific facts are not eternal or immutable, but rather the state of affairs as we perceive them at this very specific point in time. Indeed, science often is presented as though it represents the end of a process of evolution of thought, rather than one of many midpoints (Sternberg, 1998). Students could scarcely realize from this kind of teaching that the paradigms of today, and thus the theories and findings that emanate from them, will eventually be superseded, much as the paradigms, theories, and findings of yesterday were replaced by those of today. Further, students must learn that, contrary to the way many textbooks are written, the classical “scientific method” is an ideal rather than a reality, and that scientists are as susceptible to fads as is anyone else. How many scientists in his time considered as scientific evidence the data presented by Galileo Galilei to demonstrate that the Earth evolved around the Sun, and not vice versa?
Wise thinking skills can also be applied in the literature classroom. Literature is often taught in terms of the standards and context of the contemporary American scene. Characters often are judged in terms of our contemporary standards rather than in terms of the standards of the time and place in which the events took place. Imagine if students were routinely encouraged to approach the study of literary works with a dialogical mindset, studying literature in the context of history. Censorship and the banning of books often reflect the application of certain contemporary standards to literature, standards of which an author from the past never could have been aware.
The foreign language classroom is another terrain for enhancing students’ wise thinking skills. Foreign languages should be taught in the cultural context in which they are embedded, requiring students to engage in reflective and dialogical thinking to truly grasp the foreign culture and to position themselves and their experiences in relation to this culture. It tends to be more common in Europe to speak one or several languages beyond one’s mother tongue. Perhaps American students have so much more difficulty learning foreign languages than do children in much of Europe not because they lack the ability, but because they lack the motivation and the exposure. An American student would probably much more readily see the need to learn a foreign language if each of the 50 states spoke a different language, much like the member states of the European Union do. We would also do our students a service by teaching them to understand other cultures rather than just to expect people from other cultures to understand them. Learning the language of a culture is a key to understanding it, and the two can not be taught separately, or by viewing culture as an appendix to language rather than the context in which it is deeply rooted.
Teaching of history also provides an important vehicle for teaching for wisdom, and is what we have used in our own teaching for wisdom program (Reznitskaya & Sternberg, 2004; Sternberg, Jarvin, & Reznitskaya, 2008; Sternberg, Reznitskaya, & Jarvin, 2007). For example, students can put themselves in the place of famous historical leaders and ask what decisions they would have made had they been those leaders? Should Napoleon have invaded Russia? Should Abraham Lincoln have fought the Civil War or sought a negotiated settlement with the South to prevent bloodshed? Should King George III have let the American colonies go their own way, or fought them? When are settlers, settlers, and when are they invaders?
Conclusion
In conclusion, schools cannot teach wisdom, but they can teach for wisdom. The balance theory provides one of many bases by which teachers can teach for wisdom. The important goal is to teach knowledge not for its own sake, but for its use to promote the common good by balancing intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal interests over the short and long terms through the mediation of positive ethical values. Individual and group happiness depend far more on the acquisition of wisdom than they do on the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge can destroy the world, as the sophistication of terrorist bombs and attacks has shown us; wisdom can only make it better.
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Figure 1. Sixteen Principles for Teaching for Wisdom (Sternberg, 2001)

Principles 1–8

Principles 9–16
1. Explore with students the notion that conventional abilities and achievements are not enough for a satisfying life. Many people become trapped in their lives and, despite feeling conventionally successful, feel that their lives lack fulfillment. Fulfillment is not an alternative to success, but rather, is an aspect of it that, for most people, goes beyond money, promotions, large houses, and so forth.

9. Wise judgments are dependent in part on selecting among adaptation to, shaping of, and selection of environmental responses.

2. Demonstrate how wisdom is critical for a satisfying life. In the long run, wise decisions benefit people in ways that foolish decisions never do.


10. Encourage students to form, critique, and integrate their own ethical values in their thinking.

3. Teach students the usefulness of interdependence and of interacting minds.

11. Encourage students to think dialectically, realizing that both questions and their answers evolve over time, and that the answer to an important life question can differ at different times in one’s life (such as whether to go to college).

4. Role model wisdom because what you do is more important than what you say. Wisdom is action-dependent and wise actions need to be demonstrated.


12. Show students the importance of dialogical thinking, whereby they understand interests and ideas from multiple points of view.

5. Have students read about wise judgments and decision making so that students understand that such means of judging and decision making exist.


13. Teach students to search for and then try to reach the common good—a good where everyone wins and not only those with whom one identifies.

6. Help students to learn to recognize their own interests, those of other people, and those of institutions.


14. Encourage and reward wisdom.

7. Help students learn to balance their own interests, those of other people, and those of institutions.


15. Teach students to monitor events in their lives and their own thought processes about these events. One way to learn to recognize others’ interests is to begin to identify your own.

8. Teach students that the means by which the end is obtained matters, not just the end.


16. Help students understand the importance of inoculating oneself against the pressures of unbalanced self-interest and small-group interest.

Figure 2. Six Procedures for Teaching for Wisdom (Sternberg, 2001)


Procedures
1
Encourage students to engage in reflective thinking, to reflect on their own functioning to increase their metacognition
2
Engage students in class discussions, projects, and essays that encourage them to discuss the lessons they have learned from these works and how they can be applied to their own lives and the lives of others. A particular emphasis should be placed on dialogical (see principle 12) and dialectical (see principle 11) thinking.
3
Encourage students to study not only “truth,” but ethical values, as developed during their reflective thinking.
4
Place an increased emphasis on critical, creative, and practical thinking in the service of good ends that benefit the common good.
5
Encourage students to think about how almost any topic they study might be used for better or for worse ends, and about how important that final end is.
6
Remember that a teacher is a role model! To role model wisdom, the teacher should adopt a Socratic approach to teaching, and invite students to play a more active role in constructing learning—from their own point of view and from that of others.